Software testing has become a critical and an ever growing part of the development life-cycle. Initially, it relied on large teams executing manual test cases. This has changed in recent years as testing teams have found a way to facilitate a faster deployment cycle: test automation. A cost-effective automation testing strategy with a result-oriented approach is always a key to success in automation testing. In this article let’s see how to build a good test automation strategy.

Introduction to Test Automation

In manual testing, testing of a web application is done manually, by human action. Someone actually goes on a device to evaluate numerous components including design, functionality, and performance. But, manual testing can be mundane, error-prone, time-consuming, often repetitive and even boring. Whereas automation testing uses the assistance of tools, scripts, and software to perform test cases on various levels of the software.

Some of the advantages of test automation over manual testing are as follows:

Improves test accuracy

Saves time and effort

It offers test coverage

Increases test case efficiency

Reduces maintenance costs

Increases the speed of the execution

Reduces manual intervention

One of the most common mistakes with test automation is going for the immediate benefits and forgetting about the bigger picture. Many teams abandon their automation efforts after a sprint or two and go back to manual testing. Now, why do you think that happens?

Most of the time, most of these companies use automation just because others are using it. Here are some of the problems:

Companies are not sure of the right way to implement test automation

They do not have the right automated testing methods in place

Companies may not know when to implement test automation and when not to

They are not aware of the right set of tools that meet their requirements

So, what they need here to succeed in test automation is careful planning and strategy: Test Automation Strategy.

Test Automation Strategy

A cost-effective test automation strategy with a result-oriented approach is always a key to success in automation testing. Having a good test automation strategy will help businesses keep pace with the market and avoid any major technology failures.

To build a good test automation strategy you need to be familiar with test automation life cycle. Let’s explore the same:

Test Automation Life Cycle

Automation test life cycle has the following phases

Automation Feasibility Analysis

In this step, you check the feasibility of automation. This includes shortlisting the relevant test cases for automation and selecting the right test tool that fits your requirement.

Environment Set Up

In this phase, you set up the testing environment and acquire the required hardware and software to execute the automated test cases.

Test Script Development

In this step, you start creating the automation test scripts. Make sure that the scripts that you have written are reusable, well-structured and well documented.

Test Case Execution

In this step, you execute the test cases that you have written previously.

Test Result Generation and Analysis

In this last phase of test automation life cycle, you analyze the output of test cases and share the reports with stakeholders.

Building Blocks of Test Automation Strategy

The prime objective of any software project is to get a high-quality output while reducing the cost and the time required for completing the project. A good test automation strategy helps companies achieve that. Below is the list of building blocks of automation test strategy:

Scope of Automation

Defining a project scope includes outlining timelines and milestones for each sprint in the project. Two most important things here are:

Shortlisting the test cases to automate

One of the best models that can help you with that task is Mike Cohn’s “Test Automation Pyramid”. According to the pyramid, unit tests are quick to write. They have the highest ROI(Return of Investment) and should ideally form the backbone of your automation testing strategy. Regression test should be your next priority. Next, you need to check functionality and other quality characteristics with functional testing. Then comes UI(User Interface) tests. They are expensive, require heavy maintenance, and return the highest number of false positives/negatives.

Selecting the right test automation tool

You need to select one out of the several test automation tools available in the market. That can be a difficult task. In order to select the tool that fits best for your project, first, you need to understand your project requirements thoroughly. Identify your budget. Select the tools that fit your requirement and within your budget. Then you can shortlist based on other parameters such as licensing cost of the tool, maintenance cost, training and support, tools extensibility, performance and stability

Test Automation Environment

Setting up your test environment is another building block of test automation strategy. You can establish your automation test environment

First by identifying the requirements of the test environment

Then by acquiring the required tools with their licenses.

You can also consider the data that is part of test cases like:

Where to store the test data?

Should the data be masked?

What happens to the data after testing?

Test automation is like a deterministic game, where, known inputs will produce predictable outputs. A stable and predictable test environment is a prerequisite for successful test automation.

Test Automation Approach

When choosing a test automation approach, there are three areas to consider: Processes, Technology, and Roles

Process

Your automation roll out must always be a well-defined and structural process.

Technology

Here you figure out everything about the applications that you want to automate. Figure out which technology they are based on and whether your test automation platform supports these technologies.

Roles

The job roles for the test automation team are defined here. You need to make sure that all members know who is responsible for which part of the automation project. Every member of a test team, may it be domain specialists, technical testers, and test management play an important role in making test automation work. You should adopt a test automation platform that all testers can work with easily so that automation becomes a natural part of the daily work of all team members.

Risk Analyses

As we know risk analysis is an essential part of project planning in general, but it is important to consider it in the test automation as well. By considering a few viable parameters you can create a risk document. The parameters would be something like:

Description – A crisp explanation of what the risk is?

Risk Level – What will happen if the risk becomes a reality? How hard will it hit the project?

Probability – Likeness of the risk turning to reality

Mitigation – What actions can be taken to resolve the risk?

Cost Estimate – What would be the cost of mitigating the risk?

One important thing here is that the risk document is dynamic. Risks will be added and removed to the list as the project evolves.

Test Execution and Management

A test automation strategy should also define the process of execution and management of test cases. Text execution should outline things like day-to-day tasks and procedures related to automation. Consider the below suggestions when executing test cases:

Before you add any automated test cases to the regression suite, run and verify multiple times to ensure they run as expected

Define a set of best practices that make test cases resistant to changes in the system which is being automated

Assign status ‘Pass’ or ‘Fail’ to the test case after execution. , this status is assigned to the test cases automatically as per defined success criteria

If the status is ‘Fail’, perform failure analysis

Failure Analysis and Reporting Results

Having a plan for how to analyze the failed test cases and resolve them is a critical part of test automation strategy. Often time is taken to notify the failure, analyze it and resolve it much longer than you anticipate. Having a well-defined process for this can save a lot of time and effort for the development team. Outline how different errors should be handled. These errors can be:

Issues with test environment – Inform DevOps team about it

A bug in an application under test – Flaf a bug for the development team

A bug in automation scripts – Create a task for the testing team

Next, all the things that you have done till now, including the methods that you adopted to implement automation, test results, pros and cons of the test automation strategy should be captured and documented for future reference. Then you continuously improve your test automation strategy by learning from the mistakes. Revamp your test automation strategy.

So, these are some important steps and requirements that you can follow to build a cost-effective and empowered test automation strategy.

Benefits of a Test Automation Strategy

A successful testing strategy and framework can positively impact your business and organization in a number of ways like:

Provides more comprehensive testing. Even complex test automation tasks are completed very easily and your products become more robust as a result.

Promotes the re-use of critical components. This increases employee productivity since they can invest their time into other critical areas of their work and business.

Reduces maintenance costs. You can easily change and update your testing methodology easily. People in your team can adopt these changes quickly and easily.

Creates the testing standard for your organization. Your strategy will become the standard that’s used across the organization because it’s complete and robust.

If your strategy is based on result oriented approach it will give quick confidence about shippable software to stakeholders.

A successful testing strategy can lead to big things! It’s very much necessary to come up with an intelligent test automation strategy to fully enjoy the benefits of automation testing and achieve the desired level of success. Hope the things that you have learned here today will help you as you head out on your automation journey.

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